Last night, I reached over during my insomniac reading period and pulled down Volume III of Douglas Southall Freeman's classic, Lee's Lieutenants. The volume fell open to this paragraph about the fighting around Culp's Hill at Gettysburg:

Despite this inequality of firepower, Confederate losses were light. Steuart had his men well in hand and he instructed them to keep under cover. When his ammunition ran low, one of his staff took three men from the ranks, walked more than a mile to the ordnance train and brought back two large boxes of cartridges to the foot of the hill.

(MBV: Likely two 1000 round crates of .58 caliber minie ball cartridges as pictured above each weighing 96 pounds. This was heavy enough to be sure yet this wasn't much per man when distributed along the firing line. However it was likely all the four men could carry between them -- too bad they didn't have some pack mules.)

There they dumped the cartridges into a blanket, slung the blanket on a sapling and mounted the hill with the sapling over their shoulders. (Page 142.)

Note that this improvisation is evidence that neither the staff nor the ordnance train officers thought ahead to supply the troops during the night the unit spent on the hill before dawn. Proper planning prevents piss-poor performance.

Companies did not have combat or field trains in those days. All men assigned to the company had combat duties, and only two NCOs in the regiment (QM SGT and Ord SGT) were not in the direct line of fire, and thus able to work logistics. The tactics of the day assumed battles were less than one day activities.

The Army carried this philosophy through the Indian Wars to a large extent, and then found out in the Spanish American War that the US had not kept up with developments in military affairs.

It is not until the 20th Century that the Rifle or Infantry company has a supply SGT, a clerk, or any other support function. Form followed function, and in this case by a number of decades.

In our day and age, it would be good strip/clip their ammo and place in bandoleers with charging spoons. Then place in ammo cans for quick and easy access for speed loading magazines. The ammo can wait there to be used for any period of time.

Its 2015 already. Store your ammo in magazines. Be intelligent and use common magazines for your weapon systems. Store your loaded magazines in systems that can be worn, thrown and otherwise deployed. Rotate used magazines to the rear to be serviced. This is not 1994 anymore and there is no excuse other than laziness not to have a small mountain of magazines per person.

The confederates had major issues with supply, one being that supply leadership was helping the federates by commission or omission. Nearby supply trains were often withheld from the (often close to starving) troops that needed them for no good reason, and then when the troops were pushed out of their positions and the trains threatened, the trains were put to the torch by the troops they were to supply to keep the federates from obtaining them. A lot of the waste and ruin, more so on the confederate side, was caused by the supply system of both warring factions as it was a sickening for-profit enterprise in many instances.

It seems that a decent number of magazines in dedicated pouches and pockets filled with loose rounds will be the typical loadout in modern combat as opposed to bandoliers of stripper'd rounds. The only advantage of strippered rounds is the speed with wich they can be put into the magazine.

Sol, I have heard about you guys that have a huge mountain of magazines ....loaded and ready for "that" day.... whatever that might be. First of all I do not keep the lions share of my magazines loaded. I am sure I will know when it is time to load them all. Until then I will keep my ammo in ammo cans in strippers and bandoleers. My empty mags are kept in a dust free environment until I need them. I usually take them down and inspect them every year. Many of my magazines are 20 + years old and function perfectly. Having all my ammunition in one place is also a bad idea. I have made provisions in various places that allow them to be grabbed when needed. It might be nice to sit back and see 100 loaded magazines but I can only carry so many of them and I would rather carry ammo than unnecessary extra weight with my M14 steel mags.

To each his own ...but I have no problem with the tried and true system. I also do not run around with a live round in the chamber like some "heroes" out there. Accidental discharges are an embarrassment at the very least.

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

On the efficacy of passive resistance in the face of the collectivist beast. . .

Had the Japanese got as far as India, Gandhi's theories of "passive resistance" would have floated down the Ganges River with his bayoneted, beheaded carcass. -- Mike Vanderboegh.

In the future . . .

When the histories are written, “National Rifle Association” will be cross-referenced with “Judenrat.” -- Mike Vanderboegh to Sebastian at "Snowflakes in Hell"

"Smash the bloody mirror."

If you find yourself through the looking glass, where the verities of the world you knew and loved no longer apply, there is only one thing to do. Knock the Red Queen on her ass, turn around, and smash the bloody mirror. -- Mike Vanderboegh

From Kurt Hoffman over at Armed and Safe.

"I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable."

From long experience myself, I can only say, "You betcha."

"Only cowards dare cringe."

The fears of man are many. He fears the shadow of death and the closed doors of the future. He is afraid for his friends and for his sons and of the specter of tomorrow. All his life's journey he walks in the lonely corridors of his controlled fears, if he is a man. For only fools will strut, and only cowards dare cringe. -- James Warner Bellah, "Spanish Man's Grave" in Reveille, Curtis Publishing, 1947.

"We fight an enemy that never sleeps."

"As our enemies work bit by bit to deconstruct, we must work bit by bit to REconstruct. Be mindful where we should be. Set goals. We fight an enemy that never sleeps. We must learn to sleep less." -- Mike H. at What McAuliffe Said

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.